Over the weekend, this one behind-the-scenes clip of co-stars Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney — who play love interests in an upcoming, yet untitled, William Puck-directed rom-com — has a silly little time popping off a couch with Powell Sweeney, essentially took over my Twitter feed. Remarkably, the clip comes amid highly unfounded rumors that the co-stars cheated on their respective longtime partners while filming their rom-com as they share BTS photo after BTS photo in which they appear to share astronomical amounts of chemistry . Have a look:
Alison Brie on sex scenes: ‘We’re actors, it’s our job’
This kiss on the beach:
I mean look at her in the rain:
Not to mention those photos where they look into each other’s eyes and eat face.
Clips and photos like these have fueled rumors that this level of on-camera chemistry can only be achieved through, um, method acting. Powell and Sydney affair rumors have only grown louder amid tabloid gossip that Powell and his longtime girlfriend Gigi Paris have recently split — rumors of Paris’ recent Instagram activity, which has included sharing numerous iconic breakup songs and others cryptic, loaded posts heard on her story last week seemed supportive. Fans also observed that Paris appeared to unfollow Sweeney on Instagram around the same time Sweeney began posting BTS photos of herself and Powell. For her part, Sweeney reportedly got engaged to her fiancé, entrepreneur Jonathan Davino, last year.
Look, I’ll say it: On the one hand, tossing around wild, damaging claims about celebrity intimates is pretty irresponsible. Actors are actors, and intimate scenes are acting. Mind you, Penn Badgley has literally stopped filming intimacy scenes to escape the internet craze Powell and Sweeney are now in.
It’s 2023 on the other hand, and we’ve been pining for a good rom-com lately, folks — maybe one with leads with the kind of real, palpable chemistry that often only comes from having a good amount of sexual tension in the real life shares . Check out what we’ve been through lately, between Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher holding each other at arm’s length on every Your Place or Mine red carpet earlier this year, or Chris Evans and Ana de Armas holding each other in every scene what cousins looked like in Ghosted. Powell and Sweeney are a scathing antidote to the utter aridity of hot, or at least believable, rom-com fare — by actually seeming too believable.
And… I don’t hate it? cheating is bad. Apparently. But there’s something almost nostalgic about Powell and Sweeney sending the internet into a wild, horny frenzy. “He has a girlfriend, I have a tummy ache for her,” read a quote-tweet accompanying Sweeney and Powell’s weekend clip together. Another: “How’s his girlfriend?” And: “Affair allegations, give me early 2000’s Hollywood.”
It serves up 2000s-era, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as Mr. and Mrs. Smith vibes (or at least Margot Robbie and Will Smith in Focus) and teases us about the return of real cinema – or at least the return of an excellent watchable one Rom-Com. As Hugh Grant inelegantly put it earlier this month, movie sets are “so weird now” as actors stop getting drunk and “falling in love” over iPhones. “It’s so sad,” Grant mused.
Now, a lot of this sounds like a recipe for sexual harassment, but I get (maybe?) the spirit of what he’s trying to say — that co-stars used to have real sexual chemistry, and that’s what made their films so fun to watch.
